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Your Dream LIKES You

My dream-guide Silky's three dream-maxims, 1991-2007, by Chris Wayan

A winged horse explains how to do dreamwork.
A mare says 'Your dream LIKES you' and 'Remember your REM embers'; dream painting by Wayan. Click to enlarge. Lots of people say they want to remember their dreams, but are they serious? I'm not so sure. Seems like many dream-interpretation systems (including Freud's) treat dreams as tricky, devious, out to conceal. My anima, Silky, who often appears in my dreams as a horse, has loudly and repeatedly disagreed with Freud, telling me three things:
  1. Your dreams aren't out to trick you. Your dreams LIKE you.
  2. Remembering, NOT interpretation, is the challenge. "Remember your REM embers."
In other words, do you take the time to write down what you DO recall, even if they're just burnt-out coals and fragments? You've got to start somewhere! Prospectors can't ignore fragments. If you disdain the stray teeth or old coins or worthless blue clay you see, you'll never dig up that complete skeleton of T. Rex just below the surface, or that lost city, or that vein of raw diamonds. Acrylic painting, detail: my anima Silky, a talking mare, explaining how to do dreamwork.

When she first told me "Remember your REM embers", I printed the bare message out and hung it over my bed where I'd see when I woke, to remind me to grab the notebook and record even scraps of memory.

A year or two later, that seemed a bit stark, so then I drew the little poster above, and hung that up instead. But over the years it faded as inkjet prints do. So recently I painted a still larger acrylic version, to remind me.

Oops! I forgot. Here's Silky's third maxim:

  1. "Do you ACT on the messages you do get?"
No?

That's like snubbing your friends! For dreams are friends.

So never mind all that psychological theory. Just lay out a notebook within reach, and give yourself time to remember your REM embers.

And then try acting on your friends' advice.


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